As known, in the stockbreeding sector, the need to improve the animal's diet is increasing to achieve good health conditions of the animal, on one hand, and to ensure the quality and quantity of the products directly derived from the animals themselves, such as milk or other products derived therefrom, on the other.
At present, the diet of animals, e.g. of cattle, is prescribed by a specialist, typically a nutritionist, who on the basis of laboratory analysis identifies a series of information related to the nutritional values and to the chemical components which characterize each food prescribed in the animal's food diet.
Once the nutritional values and the chemical components present in each food, such as starch, proteins, dry substance, etc. have been identified, the nutritionist determines on the basis of the latter and of the physical and productive conditions of the animal, the correct food ration in terms of overall weight to be introduced in the corresponding diet.
It is further known that in many stockbreeding farms and establishments, each food dosing and the preparation of the food ration to be administered to each animal are performed by means of a mixer wagon in which the various foods are loaded by means of mechanical shovels on the basis of the corresponding weights in the diet preset by the nutritionist.
More specifically, last generation mixer wagons are provided with a weighing apparatus, which is adapted to detect, instant by instant, the weight of the food poured by the mechanical shovel into the mixing wagon, so as to indicate the reaching of the total preset weight of the food in the diet to the operators.
Unfortunately, before the aforesaid final collecting and loading operation into the mixing wagon, the foods which constitute the animals' diet may often be stored in areas or store-rooms subject to a prolonged exposure to atmospheric elements, such as rain, which as known considerably alter the nutritional values of foods.
Such an alteration indeed causes a change of the percentages of the chemical components in the foods which causes, the administered food weights being equal, a consequent variation of the diet actually administered to the animal with respect to the “theoretical” diet, i.e. the diet provided by the nutritionist on the basis of the previous laboratory tests, thus determining possible conditions of dietary imbalance in the animal and, consequently, a qualitative and quantitative deterioration of the products obtained from the animal itself.
Furthermore, a variation of the nutritional features of the diet, in terms of chemical components administrated by means of foods, may be extremely harmful on the animal, which in case of serious food imbalance may be subjected to a stress which may compromise the physical conditions thereof.
It is further appropriate to add that when an animal ingests a food having an excessive amount of proteins as compared to that provided in the diet, it transforms such an excess of proteins, by means of the digestive cycle, into nitrogenous compounds which are expelled by the animal in the form of faeces, thus causing a non-negligible impact from the environmental point of view each time the number of animals subjected to a diet having a protein excess is quite high.